Tagged with “web design”
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Chris Coyier teaches us that if we care about succeeding in something, we need to be willing to persist for a long time. He inspires us to grab hold of the joy that comes from building for ourselves, too. He encourages us to not just use a framework because we’re “supposed to”, but to use whatever tool is right for the job. He also enlightens us to the superpower of using SVG in practical ways.

Chris Coyier is the founder of everybody’s favorite CSS resource CSS-Tricks, and the author of newly released A Book Apart published “Practical SVG”. He’s a fellow podcaster co-hosting the Shop Talk Show. He co-founded the incredibly innovative web coding playground, CodePen. He loves to share his knowledge as an international speaker and avid blogger. His life goal is to be a banjo player in an old time string band.

The next step for Jeffrey Zeldman: this week Paul and Rich talk to the web design pioneer who, in Paul’s words, “designed the aesthetic of the web for a while.” They discuss his history as founder of the design studio Happy Cog and A List Apart Magazine, co-founder of A Book Apart and An Event Apart, and author of, amongst other titles, Taking Your Talent to the Web. They then discuss his newest venture, Studio.Zeldman, dig deep into the difference between an agency and a studio, and touch, controversially, on the pronunciation of “GIF.”

Right before a role=drinks meetup I had a very pleasant conversation with Léonie Watson about what quality means to her. Her definition of quality may differ a bit from many other digital designers and engineers. Léonie turned blind 16 years ago, so certain things we consider to be important might not even exist for her, and the things that are most important to her may not be the first things designers and developers think about.

We talked about why so many websites are badly built. About the fundamental basics that are missing in many of the frameworks that developers like to use today. And about the designers who believe that wow-experience is more important than user experience. We also talked about the future of technology, incredible things like AI, and how this may make life so much easier for so many people: I like the idea of self driving cars, Léonie needs one. But we also talk about some of the conflicts that exist, for instance between accessibility and privacy, or between different needs of different people.

On today’s episode we sit down with Marcy Sutton—a senior front end engineer at Deque Systems, where she works on accessibility. We talk about the intersection and differentiations in performance and accessibility. Marcy explains that there’s a huge audience that’s being missed by not making your website accessible.

Unfortunately, if it’s not something you have a personal connection to, it may not occur to you to think about. We talk about how most companies become interested in accessibility after they suffer a lawsuit, and how Marcy’s teaching us ways we can be proactive instead of reactive. We look at tools on how to make our sites more accessible and who to make them accessible for. We also talk about the metrics to use to measure success and usability.

For years we’ve been told that the websites we make shouldn’t make people think and that we should put user needs first. But what if none of that were true? In this talk, art director and designer Andy Clarke explores how art direction and creative expression make designs that are distinctive, individual and full of personality.
Slides: speakerdeck.com/malarkey/art-directing-web-design

We’re back talking books and we’re joined by 4 other technical book authors to discuss why we wrote a book, figuring out where to start, whether writing takes you out of the game, and should you write for fun or profit?

Q & A

7:30 Why did Brad Frost write a book?

10:40 Why did Richard Feldman write a book on Elm?

13:00 Simon King: why a book about industrial design?

15:40 What was Val’s path to writing a book about web animation?

18:40 Should you be an expert first and then write a book or become an expert by writing a book?